I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

One of the problems is that we only recognize Alzheimer's disease often when it's already

at a pretty advanced stage.

And so if you add to that the people of mild cognitive impairment and then add the people

who my study, we call preclinical Alzheimer's disease before they have clear symptoms.

You're probably talking 15 million people in the United States alone who are at some

stage.

But I do have high hopes that if we could start treating much earlier that we could bring

that symptomatic number much lower and of course that's the stage that's so devastating

to people and their families.

That's Dr. Reese's spurling.

She's leading two major clinical trials aimed at the prevention of Alzheimer's disease.

Her earlier research on how memories are formed in our brains is what led me to visit her

lab in Boston several years ago.

We were filming an episode of Science in the American Frontiers called Don't Forget.

This is so great to be talking with you today and to see you again after all these years.

Remember the last time we met I was just coming out of an MRI machine and you told me

I had a plump hip of campus.

I know and in fact people have been giving me a hard time ever since then about whether

their hippocampuses as plump as Alan Alder's.

So I absolutely remember I still have your picture from that up in my office.

So though sadly I don't get to go to my office much these days right now.

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